Pan Am Recap: Trouble in the Captain’s Chair

Finally, in Pan Am’s fourth episode, someone has decided to point out that Captain Dean seems awfully young to be in charge of a whole airplane. The criticism comes from an older pilot, but it takes hold in Ted, who spends most of this episode becoming gradually more sympathetic, because a jerk can never just be a jerk without telling us his backstory so that we must reluctantly feel sorry for him.

Though Kate was six hours (!) late in dropping off the camera, and though Laura snapped a fair number of non–Cold War–essential pictures with it, Kate survives another week in the CIA. Richard offers to reassign Laura so that she will no longer distract Kate, but she refuses. She’s come to realize — too late, of course — that she really wants her around. She even buys her a new camera, only to arrive home to find Laura has moved out to live with Maggie and the 46 other beatniks in that apartment. If Laura shows up wearing a beret next week … so help me, God.